Community Climate Fellowship

Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, Pamela Beasant has been living in Stromness, Orkney, for many years. She is a widely published poet and nonfiction writer, was the first George Mackay Brown Fellow in 2007, and has had seven plays commissioned and performed in Orkney. She directed the Orkney Writers’ Course for the St Magnus International Festival from 2011 through 2017. Pamela has given readings and led workshops all over the UK and in Brittany, Bratislava, Canada, and Australia.

Her Community Climate Fellowship project will take place in Stromness, a town in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. She will coordinate a two-day immersive community event to create collaboratively written poems, based on the Japanese renga form, around the themes of climate change and imagined futures for Orkney and the wider world. Poems will be made available to the public online, and in a limited number of print copies to be made available through the Orkney Libraries.

Gyanpriya Maharaj, senior lecturer and director at the Center for the Study of Biological Diversity at the University of Guyana, is an entomologist and ethologist who works in the areas of biodiversity education and policy development. Her research examines the impact of natural and anthropogenic factors, including climate change, habitat type, landscape modification, and pollution, on the diversity, ecology, and behavior of tropical animals. She is passionate about capacity building through teaching, research, and collaboration, and her work engages local and international communities on the challenges, opportunities, and considerations for biodiversity monitoring and research from a Global South perspective.

Her Community Climate Fellowship project will take place at the Sophia Point Rainforest Research Centre in Guyana, located near the confluence of the Essequibo, Mazaruni, and Cuyuni Rivers. Working with young people from local primary school environmental and science clubs, as well as students from Indigenous communities near Sophia Point, she will lead a one-day exercise, “Forest Detectives: Using Terrestrial Bioindicators to Find Climate Clues in Nature.” This project combines classroom lessons with field observations and will be coordinated by students and faculty from the University of Guyana. The exercise will provide participants with experience through the process of scientific inquiry and bolster their ecological literacy by illustrating how lichens, butterflies, ants, and frogs tell the tale of climate change. Students will integrate their own local and indigenous knowledge with scientific observations to better understand the interconnectedness of climate and ecology.

Rodrigo Bastidas Pérez, based in Pasto, Colombia, is a university professor who holds a PhD in Literature, as well as the general editor of the publishing house Ediciones Vestigio. He is the author of Cuerpos luminares y de otras dimensiones (2023), a critical work exploring Colombian science fiction, as well as the novel Las dimensiones absolutas (2025). He edited the anthologies Relojes que no marcan la misma hora (2017) and El tercer mundo después del sol (2021), among others.

For his Community Climate Fellowship project, he will coordinate a series of public convenings at the Prosa del Mundo bookstore in Bogotá, Colombia. The meetings will be hosted by representatives from Ediciones Vestigio, a fiction publisher; Revista Micelio, a magazine focused on issues of nature and the environment; and Otros Presentes, a philosophical group focused particularly on animal studies. In these meetings, participants will reflect on how we imagine, from a Colombian point of view, a mode of fiction that responds to local climate challenges, as well as envisioning futures that counter the apocalyptic visions promoted by powerful corporate entities. Meetings will include readings and discussions of chapters from CSI’s book Climate Imagination and will lead to the creation of a small publication blending essays and fiction stories.

Mito Reyes is a writer, editor, and researcher who holds a PhD in Hispanic Literature from El Colegio de San Luis. He is a member of the Mixe Collective (Colmix), an inter-community collaboration network dedicated to research and training in Mixe knowledge. He is an editor at Editorial Nanoky, where he specializes in the design and publication of materials in the Ayöök language, as well as research relevant to the Mixe people. He is a cofounder of the Nemuk Collective, which is dedicated to cultural self-management in Totontepec, which is located within the Mexican state of Oaxaca. He coordinates and edits community and academic publications and writes essays, short stories, and research articles, as well as works in the crónica mode of literary journalism.

His Community Climate Fellowship project is based in Totontepec Villa de Morelos, Oaxaca, México. He will lead a science fiction writing exercise that creates space for participants to explore the relationship between humans, the natural world, and the cosmos according to the tenets of Ayöök thought. The stories created through this exercise will be collected in a book or digital archive, published in the Ayöök language.

Ebi Robert is a trained lawyer and creative writer. He is the author of the speculative fiction novels Banishment of the Six Forces and Riddles in the Shadows; his other published works include Zige and Eulogy and Puffery. Several of his works have been featured in international anthologies. He is the founder of ACER Writing House and a member of the African Speculative Fiction Society, British Science Fiction Association, Association of Nigerian Authors, and World Institute for Peace.

Ebi’s Community Climate Fellowship project is based in Yenagoa, in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, where he will lead a set of activities designed to raise awareness of climate issues and encourage people to envision climate futures: a radio program on the station Golden 97.5 FM exploring visions of hopeful climate futures; an in-person event featuring readings from the Center for Science and the Imagination’s book Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures; and the assembly and distribution of a chapbook in Nigerian Pidgin English with contributions from local writers exploring culturally responsive and locally rooted climate futures.

Diana Seecharran is a lecturer in the Department of Biology at the University of Guyana. She holds an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development and PhD in Innovation in Global Development. She teaches ecology, natural resources management, and coastal zone management. Her research focuses on how cultural practices and beliefs influence environmental perceptions and attitudes and affect resource use. She also works in the areas of sustainable tourism development, farmers’ adaptations to climate change, and resilience of coastal rice systems.

For her Community Climate Fellowship project, Diana will host workshops on climate change and resilient futures for Grade 9 students from four schools in Georgetown, Guyana. During the workshops, students will engage with locally relevant education resources about climate change; build knowledge and skills related to mitigating and adapting to climate change; envision possible climate-resilient futures for their communities; and learn about become climate leaders and advocates within their communities.

Wen Di Sia is a writer and researcher based in Malaysia. She was trained as a journalist, spent a decade in advertising, and now dedicates herself as a collaborative partner to Peninsular Malaysia’s Indigenous (Orang Asli) communities through Gerimis Art, a collective she cofounded in 2018. The collective collaborates long-term with Orang Asli artists and communities to co-create artworks, publications, exhibitions, and materials that highlight their histories, adat (customs), and ecological wisdom, while advocating for the rights and the return of their customary territories.

Her Community Climate Fellowship project, “The Seasons of Ulu Jelai,” takes place within the Malaysian state of Pahang. It is a collaborative project that aims to document, visualize, and archive the seasonal calendar of the Semai people of Ulu Jelai, which includes their annual hill paddy cultivation, the fruiting season, monsoon fishing, and other seasonal activities. Co-leading the project with youth from her Semai host family, Wen Di will host a learning and exchange session in the village of Ulu Jelai with Semai elders and youth. The knowledge gathered from this session will culminate in a visualized seasonal calendar presented in Semai, English, and Malay languages, incorporating graphic design, illustrations, and photos. The seasonal calendar will be displayed in a gallery in Kuala Lumpur for public outreach and awareness. The project will combine Traditional Ecological Knowledge with present-day community experiences of climate change and adaptation.

Tan Su Lin is an award-winning journalist, communications specialist, science communicator, and media trainer with more than sixteen years of experience in journalism and communications. In 2020, she cofounded the Science Media Centre Malaysia (SMC) to champion the importance of effective science communication and evidence-based reporting. SMC is Malaysia’s first information resource centre of its kind, supporting local journalists covering complex science topics that make the headlines. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Climate Change Communications at Monash University Malaysia. 

Her Community Climate Fellowship project will take place in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. She will pursue a co-produced, collaborative research project with the Kadazandusun people, the largest Indigenous group in Sabah. The research will explore connections between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western science approaches in building climate adaptation and resilience strategies. The project will involve ethnographic research in Kadazandusun communities, interviews with community members, and focus-group discussions designed to foster two-way knowledge exchanges between TEK and Western science.

Reading has been the central axis of Vicky García Toloza’s career. A lawyer with a postgraduate degree in Pedagogy of Differences, she has dedicated her work to strengthening reading mediation with one key premise: it is only possible to guide and foster reading skills when the mediator first cultivates their own bond with books. With this vision, she designed a mentoring model that, for more than a decade, has impacted teachers, librarians, and educational communities. Her leadership has driven the creation of projects such as the Épico Festival of Children’s and Young Adult Literature, the Círculo Abierto Publishing House, and the Dos Mangos Bookstore, all dedicated to building reading communities.

Her Community Climate Fellowship project is based in Barranquilla, Colombia, and builds on the work of Fundación Círculo Abierto, an independent, nonprofit organization has been designing and implementing educational and cultural projects around literature and reading since 2010. She will create a set of three “Rolling Trees,” moveable shade structures, which will act as community spaces for reflection, action, and connection. These structures will be set up in three locations throughout the city: Librería Dos Mangos in the El Prado neighborhood, the Técnica de Rebolo School in Rebolo, and the Paulino Salgado Batata School in Nueva Colombia. The shade areas will be used to expand access to the street, support the city’s civic culture, and host readings from CSI’s Climate Imagination book.

Marilinda Guerrero Valenzuela is a writer and storyteller from Guatemala whose work explores the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Specializing in speculative literature, she studies and promotes the genre within her country, weaving local myths, contemporary voices, and visionary ideas into her stories. Her storytelling has taken her across Latin America, where she has shared her work at festivals such as Las Lobas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (2018), the 33rd Meeting of Storytellers in Buga, Colombia (2019), and the 16th International Independent Puppet Festival Titiritlán in Guatemala (2022). Through her words, Marilinda invites audiences to question what lies beyond the visible world and to find wonder in the unexpected.

Her Community Climate Fellowship project will take place in Guatemala City, as well as in three different departments across the country: Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango and Sololá. She will coordinate an oral storytelling workshop that addresses climate change, community realities, hope, and alternative futures. Each participant in the workshop will imagine a positive future and explore its scientific, technological, and cultural dimensions, and then propose solutions for climate challenges. These proposals will be collected in a short book titled Present Solutions for Future Climate Issues.

Steve Willis is a chemical engineer and innovator with decades of experience addressing environmental problems for large-scale industries. He is also a climate fiction author, and he produced the No More Fairy Tales anthology for the COP27 climate summit in collaboration with the Green Stories team. Genevieve Hilton is an author and journalist who writes under the name Jan Lee. She is editor-in-chief of the literary magazine The Apostrophe and a book reviewer for Earth.org. Together, Steve and Genevieve are the coauthors of Fairhaven: A Novel of Climate Optimism.

For their Community Climate Fellowship project, Steve and Genevieve will present several sessions on climate fiction storytelling at the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil and at the Alternative COP (AlterCOP) events in Malaysia. These will provide opportunities to engage global leaders, advocates, journalists, and members of the public about hopeful climate futures. Further, conversations and interviews conducted at these events will serve as the foundation for articles in Earth.org and for chapters in the sequel to Steve and Genevieve’s coauthored climate fiction novel Fairhaven.